Millennium Tower vs One Rincon Hill South Tower

Comparing the Millennium Tower and the One Rincon Hill South Tower is interesting because they both stand in San Francisco, CA, and were completed just one year apart, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

These two towers present an interesting contrast in their proportions. The One Rincon Hill South Tower rises higher at 640ft (195m), while the Millennium Tower reaches 604ft (184m). However, the Millennium Tower accommodates more floors with 58 levels above ground, compared to 54 floors in the One Rincon Hill South Tower.

This suggests different approaches to interior space design. The One Rincon Hill South Tower has an average floor-to-floor height of approximately 3.6m, while the Millennium Tower has more compact floors averaging around 3.2m each.

These different proportions likely reflect the specific needs each building was designed to serve, whether driven by zoning regulations, client requirements, or the intended use of the spaces within. The contrast shows how architects can achieve different spatial experiences even when working with similar overall building scales.

Both the Millennium Tower and the One Rincon Hill South Tower were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Contemporary style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Handel Architects and Solomon Cordwell Buenz followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

Both the Millennium Tower and the One Rincon Hill South Tower are primarily residential towers, serving similar roles in the urban fabric.

In terms of capacity, the Millennium Tower offers 419 apartments, while the One Rincon Hill South Tower provides 390 units.

Both towers provide significant parking capacity, with Millennium Tower offering 340 spaces and the One Rincon Hill South Tower offering 455.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.